I found a book extract, and by the grace and mercy of the ever loving Dong, it’s appalling. In my many years on Earth (and a few elsewhere) I’ve read many terrible fantasy novels, the genre attracts bad writers (I’m talking about you, Robert Jordan), but this is absolute filth.

I love Bernie Sanders too! I think he’s one of the best candidates to emerge since I started following US politics as a sport and I love the fact that he has principles, not polish. I feel like the criticism of him is all on such a High School Mean Girls level. It’s all “Oh look at crazy old Bernie with his crazy hair being all nutty there! What a nut!” Really? Is he? What part of what he’s saying is so darn nutty? Because I’m hearing a lot of very sensible leftist liberal stuff from him. Maybe the problem is that the American Liberal politicians have moved so far to the right that even a sensible Leftist seems extreme now. It’s like they saw the success of the Tea Party movement (which wasn’t even that big, just that loud) and started trying to cater to the right instead of sticking with their base and actually acting like an alternative to the GOP. They’ve been getting creamed in elections because the Dems sound like weak tea Republicans, so much pro-corporate, drill-baby-drill, guns are awesome, Obama sucks rhetoric from them it was no surprise they got their asses handed to them. If someone wanted to vote in someone with right wing sensibilities they’re going to vote for the real thing, not the watered down version of the same thing. So I say when the “Bernie is a nut!” talk starts, challenge it, ask why it’s so nutty! I don’t think the answer is necessarily to try to be more moderate. I think it’s better to understand your principles and why they are your principles.

OK take this for the outsiders opinion that it is but I don’t think you can even compare thinking Bernie has great ideas to being in the Tea Party. Bernie has his ideas and principles – agree with them or disagree with them, that’s fine. The Tea Party was a pretty thinly veiled racist reaction to a Black guy getting elected (and often not even that thinly veiled). Suddenly they were fired up to take THEIR country back. Back from who? They didn’t care about government spending when it was a white guy doing it. They were the driving engine of the birther movement, prancing around in their fake colonial garb was a pretty clear message that they were the REAL Americans and he was some kind of foreign usurper trying to take their stuff. There’s no reaching a moderate middle ground with that! Black guy gets elected and suddenly they’re all “No taxation without representation!” because apparently if the democratically elected president doesn’t look like you then he doesn’t represent you. There’s no point trying to figure out what a moderate compromise would be there because there can’t be one. Unless you’re also willing to be slightly more racist I guess? But that would just make everyone worse! No I believe the answer is in understanding why you believe you are right, being open to questioning it and if need be, being willing to change your mind. I think that will prevent blind extremism.